Opinion | No war-war, try jaw-jaw
Last month, US President Donald Trump sought to choke Iran’s oil exports by stiffening sanctions, a move that is likely to make Iran’s economy shrink and cause domestic hardship
With Donald Trump in the White House, US-Iran ties have snapped. The deal his predecessor had struck with Tehran to contain its nuclear ambitions is all but dead, the US has said it’s sending its USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier to the Gulf, and Iran has threatened to resume its uranium enrichment to levels that could put nukes within its reach. The US deployment is claimed to be based on unspecified intelligence inputs of potential Iranian aggression in the region.
Last month, Trump sought to choke Iran’s oil exports by stiffening sanctions, a move that is likely to make Iran’s economy shrink and cause domestic hardship. Washington had also re-classified the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, an elite security force, as a terrorist organization. Iran had responded by threatening to blockade the Strait of Hormuz, through which much of the Gulf’s oil exports are shipped. Some analysts believe the US merely wants to guard these tankers. Yet, there is no saying what could precipitate a flare-up involving deadly fire-arms. All this makes the Gulf a global hotspot once again.
It is not as if Iran has not tried to exercise clout in the region before by seeking to clamp the Strait of Hormuz. What is worrisome this time is that US-ally Israel appears to have Trump’s ear on the wider threat allegedly posed by Iran, often via proxy militia forces such as the Hizbullah, to peace in the Middle East. If the US buys the argument that Iran’s presumed nukes — Tehran denies any attempt to use uranium for weapons—need to be neutralized by a pre-emptive strike, then a war would ensue. That would be disastrous, and not only for its effect on global oil prices. As the old saying of World War II vintage goes, the jaw-jaw of talks is always preferable to the war-war of armed conflict.
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